![]() And I’m hypersensitive to a fault.” “Red Rocket” director Sean Baker and actor Simon Rex Michael Buckner for PMC But I know that type of person, and they just blindly walk through life hurting people and they don’t care. That’s why I haven’t had more success: I’m not that type of person. That type of person will cut anybody’s head off to get to the top and doesn’t have any awareness of what they’re doing. It didn’t matter what his career was, he could have been a Wall Street exec, he could have been an actor, he could have been a lawyer, whatever. But as Rex points out, “I’ve been around enough sociopathic narcissists in Hollywood for the last 20-plus years that I knew exactly this type of person. Rex’s acting chops are on full display throughout, despite the lack of prep time. They taped the bottom of my feet because the old Texas street was gravelly.” But that one on the physical level was very challenging. I had a lot of moments like that where I just had to push through. It was a lot, I don’t think a lot of people would have done it. “We’re running butt naked through a dangerous neighborhood at night, hiding from police. “That was scary because we’re doing it with no permits,” said Rex. The worst sequence to shoot took place at night as Mikey runs naked and barefoot in a bad neighborhood. There’s no trailer, I’d go sit in my little rental car between scenes with the AC on.” Simon Rex at Telluride. ![]() I liked shooting a low-budget indie, pushing the limits. It wasn’t a Burbank set with a bunch of extras and fake, with the perfect wardrobe. Before, I might have been, ‘I’m bullshitting right now.’ I got thrown into a world of amazing actors in a real environment, the smells, the sights, and the sounds. And it worked.”įilmed during COVID, “we were running the whole time on a high-wire act,” said Rex. Let’s just do it and have fun and throw caution into the wind. I hit this point where I was living in the desert, nothing was going on, surrender. ![]() “Then I read the script, like, ‘Whoa, there’s some heavy shit in here.’ And I just didn’t give a fuck. ![]() He’s that hustler, from whatever industry, who will do anything to get ahead. Somehow, Rex gets us to root for Mikey to turn toward the light, even as we know he just can’t. We watch with fascinated horror as Mikey builds his life back by selling marijuana to the locals, and just as Lexi starts to believe in him again, he falls for an underage waitress (Suzanna Son) at a local donut shop. It’s a two-hour-and-eight-minute movie, and Rex commands the screen for two hours and five minutes, carrying the film on his shoulders from the opening sequence, when Mikey arrives in town with only the shirt on his back and somehow cajoles his resistant ex, Lexi (Bree Elrod), to let him stay with her and her mom (Brenda Deiss) in rural Texas. Less than a year later, “Red Rocket” was invited to the official competition in Cannes. (They heard about it after wrap.) “I could tell from his movies, he operates from the heart, and he’s an empath,” Rex said. With no time to prep or even think about what he was doing, Rex committed to the role and put his trust in Baker, who asked him not to involve his reps. I need you here immediately.” The movie started shooting in Texas three days later. And I would never get this opportunity.”Īcademy Governors Awards Go to Mel Brooks and Angela Bassett Otherwise, I was going to keep disappearing. “I knew before I even read the script, I was in no position to turn down the Sean Baker movie, no matter what the content of the film was,” Rex said in an interview. Baker was ready to shoot “ Red Rocket” (December 10, A24), his follow-up to “The Florida Project” (which landed a Best Supporting Actor nomination for Willem Dafoe), and wanted Rex to read for down-on-his-luck porn star Mikey Saber. On October 23, 2020, the former MTV VJ heard from Sean Baker, a director he did not know, who wanted Rex to send in an iPhone audition for the lead role in his upcoming movie. How did a former New York model who gave what Gus Van Sant once called “one of the worst auditions I’ve ever seen” start winning breakout actor prizes at age 47? For Simon Rex, it entailed sinking his life savings into a property in the desert in Joshua Tree and contemplating flipping houses for a living.
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